Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

I understand the rationale and I am happy for the authors and I think the distribution will be way better.

As a user I like to get out as soon as I click because I can trace back the link and I can do clipping or bookmark in my browser.

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It seems like they changed the strategy and enhanced UX. Feels like now there would a lot of worthless traffic in the web

I’m just happy they got rid of the system web view and replaced it with the one which they can inject their own JavaScript into. Bonus points that it covers the thing I want to read and I can’t turn it off. Truly, a masterpiece of engineering from the guy whose entire schtick was coming up with was to boost engagement from kids.

That's precisely what Wechat is doing. Most chinese "mega apps" do this.

Elon absolutely on his track to copy this important feature [1]

The webview works as a traffic faucet. Elon can turn it on or off for every third-party site, you know, for "Internet safety".

My take:

Next step is X.com proprietary APIs inside the Webview, like payment and everything.

The ultimate goal is a "mini-app" framework that use PWA-like techs to run everything based on the Webview and circumvent Appstore.

And last a phone that runs the "mini-app" framework because why not, as an "AI edge node" like Elon recently proposed.

[1]: https://x.com/danmurrays/status/1683446630245187584

Since we're doing PSAs, isn't it also now just a completely broken platform on mobile for everyone who isn't logged in?

> Something went wrong, but don't fret - let's give it another shot.

This is all I've seen for literally years now. No real error, does not even say to login or install an app, just blames it on my privacy extensions (I don't actually have any) and offers a button to pointlessly try again. No big loss, but surprising! On the one hand, it's the only time big tech isn't engaged in obnoxious harassment, but it's also a conspicuously dumb oversight in the funnel

  Source                           |  Destination
  -----------------------------------------------------------                                 
  ^https?://x.com/(.*)             |  https://xcancel.com/$1
  ^https?://twitter.com/(.*)       |  https://xcancel.com/$1
  ^https?://instagram.com/(.*)     |  https://imginn.com/$1
  ^https?://www.instagram.com/(.*) |  https://imginn.com/$1

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What bugs me is the sheer number of people, and organisations, who still link to images and video or '1/20' long screeds on twitter, while the next article on their own site is bitching about how bad twatter/owner/politics etc is. Seriously if a site, blog, forum etc you know ever links to twitter then just stop interaction with them, they're lazy mofos need to do their own groundwork.

Does this mean an attacker can turn any impression into any GET request?

Another example and incentive not to use apps and to be held hostage, when an equivalent web service is available. On Android, just use Hermit or some similar app to sandbox a webview of their webpage.

On a related topic, I've been following with some amusement the outrage on Reddit/r/Grok because Grok will no longer make porn. Apparently Grok was trained on all the NSFW material on X and Twitter before it intentionally so Grok could have a "spicy" mode. And spicy it was. Some of the stuff it made was really good and people loved it. But (allegedly) Musk changed his mind to go after enterprise and government accounts so spicy mode was killed and now there a lot of angry users complaining on Reddit.

My interest is this: It appears that it's not possible to over-ride the training effectively since NSFW material bleeds into normal image requests. Musk had this problem before trying to over-ride Grok's training, so at one point said he would have to retrain Grok. It's interesting to me that LLMs can't be steered effectively, which makes me wonder if they can ever really be aligned ("safe")

I find it so sad that Twitter still gets traffic at all. Even if we put aside the super shady content on this platform (free speech, lol), the app, either on the web or mobile, has a sub-par user experience.

I wish all the devs that I respect were using another platform.

What about links to malware or other illegal content that will be downloaded without me clicking on it...?

Is it only in the app, or also with the browser?

Crazy.

Again, anyone still using Twitter should know they are contributing to the richest man in the world actively pushing to disrupt the core fabric of our society.

Why are you using twitter for anything at this stage?

This seems like a fairly reasonable UX improvement. Unless I'm missing anything, it doesn't seem like this has nefarious intent, it's just there so that when a user clicks a link, they see the content as quickly as possible.

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It's astonishing how quickly discussion disintegrates when Musk is mentioned on HN. He really is such a divisive figure, with incredibly polarised language both in support and against him.

Normal reasoned arguments are just absent here. Sometimes when two people disagree, they can still have a nuanced conversation/argument about it. But not about Musk.

There are some opinions in this thread that I vehemently disagree with, but it's not worth escalating by adding my opinion to the pile.

It reminds me of that phenomenon where you read the newspaper and notice an article in your domain of expertise and it's riddled with errors! Then you turn the page, read an article about something else, and completely trust it. You somehow didn't transfer the knowledge that the newspaper is inaccurate to the new domain.

It makes me wonder what other discussions on HN (and elsewhere) are completely devoid of nuance and reason, but I just don't notice it.

Nobody wants a damn web view. If I'm clicking off to a link, I may want to click to another app and back in and still be where it was... If it's in a webview that's gone as soon as I click out. Yes, you can open in Chrome or whatever, open in a browser, but that's a pain in the ass to do an the time. I hate web views, in all forms.

Nikita should be ashamed of how BAD the android X app is.

I've been a long-time Twitter user. I don't hate Elon, so when he bought it I was cautiously optimistic.

I deactivated last week. The platform is bad and getting worse. It's scammy and spammy. Everything is designed around garbage engagement, so that the X team can brag about how good the product is doing.

If you link to a page with ads on it, will that webview load count as an ad impression?

I’ve also noticed recently that when I click a Twitter link from Telegram, it hijacks the Telegram webview to open the tweet in Safari.

I don’t know what everyone gets out of Twitter/X. I signed up recently to see what the fuss is about,

I think I selected science and music as starting interests. Within 10 minutes I was getting lots of right wing borderline Nazi bullshit.

Tries it all again in incognito mode. Roughly same thing. WTF